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Advance care planning (ACP) has been suggested to improve the quality of life (QoL) and mental wellbeing in severely ill patients and their relatives. To read the full article, log in using your MPFT NHS OpenAthens details.
Person-centred palliative care poses high demands on professionals and patients regarding appropriate and effective communication and informed decision-making. This is even more so for patients with limited health literacy, as they lack the necessary skills to find, understand and apply information about their health and healthcare. Recognizing patients with limited health literacy and adapting the communication, information provision and decision-making process to their skills and needs is essential to achieve desired person-centred palliative care. Open Access Article
To provide an update on recent studies about psychological interventions in palliative (mainly cancer) care with a focus on physical, psychological, spiritual, and social aspects.. MPFT staff can use the OVID link, or you can request a copy of this article by replying to this email. Please ensure you are clear which article you are requesting.
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Caring for those who are dying and in the last days of life is a common aspect of caring for people in the community. While caseloads are time-pressured, stretched nurses can do a great deal to reduce any suffering at the end of life by providing optimal assessment and care. To read the full article, log in using your NHS OpenAthens details.
Despite universal recognition of the importance of Advance care planning (ACP) for people with dementia, who gradually lose their ability to make informed decisions themselves, ACP still only happens infrequently, and evidence-based recommendations on when and how to perform this complex process are lacking. We aimed to develop evidence-based clinical recommendations to guide professionals across settings in the practical application of ACP in dementia care.
Open Access Article
Psychiatry today is mainly practised within a curative framework. However, many mental disorders are persistent and negatively affect quality of life as well as life expectancy. This tension between treatment goals and the actual illness trajectory has evoked a growing academic interest in ‘palliative psychiatry’, namely the application of a palliative care approach in patients with severe persistent mental illness. Recently, Trachsel et al presented a working definition of palliative psychiatry. This first official attempt to capture the concept is based on WHO’s widely accepted definition of palliative care but modified and limited to include only severe persistent psychiatric illness. While this is a welcome step in the discussion on palliative care approaches in psychiatry, it also opens up for new questions. One of the most evident is whether psychiatry actually needs its own definition of palliative care or, put differently, whether there is something about mental disorders that differs so radically from other medical conditions that it calls for a separate definition. We acknowledge the need to discuss the goals of psychiatric care in patients with severe persistent psychiatric illness. However, we question whether a separate definition of palliative care exclusive to psychiatry is the right way to go. In this paper, we discuss why.. To read the full article, log in using your NHS OpenAthens details.
The pathway aims to provide learning disability staff with a unified and structured approach that places the service user at the centre of care and enhances partnership working with palliative care services. The pathway prompts the development of a personalised care plan that respects the wishes of the person and their family.
To read the full article, choose Open Athens “Institutional Login” and search for “Midlands Partnership”.
Although there are many differences regarding what palliative care is and to whom it should be delivered, its delivery and integration earlier in the disease trajectory have been advocated since 1990. More recently, there has been a heightened interest in early access to specialist palliative care through its provision earlier in the disease trajectory to improve patient and caregiver outcomes. This article explores the challenges in understanding and defining ‘early’ specialist palliative care. It also examines the available evidence on early specialist palliative care interventions and their association with patient and caregiver outcomes.
To read the full article, log in using your SSOTP (legacy account) NHS OpenAthens details. MPFT- You can request a copy of this article by replying to this email. Please ensure you are clear which article you are requesting.
Out-of-hours (OOH) primary care services are a key element of community care at the end of life, yet there have been no previous attempts to describe the scope of this activity. We aimed to establish the proportion of Oxfordshire patients who were seen by the OOH service within the last 30 days of life, whether they were documented in a palliative phase of care and the demographic and clinical features of these groups.
Open Access Article
Only limited data are available concerning the diseases managed before death and hospital palliative care (HPC) use according to place of death in France. We therefore conducted an observational study based on administrative health data in a large population to identify the diseases treated one year before death in 2013, the place of stay with or without hospital palliative care, and the place of death. Open Access Article
Homelessness is a complex and multidimensional issue often involving a combination of personal vulnerability, the limitations of social housing, and inadequacies in welfare support. Providing palliative and end-of-life care to people experiencing homelessness is challenging, both to individuals receiving care and nurses aiming to meet their complex needs. This article discusses what is understood by the concept of ‘homelessness’ and examines the barriers to accessing effective healthcare for people who are homeless and have life-limiting conditions.
To read the full article, log in using your SSSFT NHS OpenAthens details. SSOTP - You can request a copy of this article by replying to this email. Please ensure you are clear which article you are requesting.
Janet Scammell, Associate Professor (Nursing), Bournemouth University, considers the importance of education in ensuring nurses have the knowledge and skills to deliver person-centred care at the end of life. To read the full article, log in using your MPFT NHS OpenAthens details.
The aim of this study was to enhance understanding about homecare workers providing care to people with dementia at end of life by exploring homecare workers' perceptions of challenges and the support they needed and sometimes received.. To read the full article, log in using your MPFT NHS OpenAthens details.